Dispersed camping at Willard Springs, AZ, and racquetball

These new National Forest rules have got people in a tizzy.

The crew and I go on our usual long hike this morning, this time following the forest road further than we’ve gone before. We happen upon a couple who brought out their three dogs for exercise this Sunday morning. The woman tells me if we keep going we’ll come to a pond.

We say goodbye and the crew and I continue until we find the pond.

Spike never passes up an opportunity to get in the water.

I wouldn’t call it a pond. It’s more like a watering hole. Hmmm . . . the water explains why Ken saw an elk down this way. By the looks of the tracks, it’s an elk corridor. Darn, I want to see an elk! Of course, Spike takes a soak while Bridget and I wait.

Bridget doesn’t like to get dirty.

Anyway . . .

Getting back to the National Forest rules . . .

A well-balanced crew . . .

On our way back to our campsite, the crew and I see Gail outside her motorhome. She calls us over.

She wants to tell me about the National Forest volunteer who stopped by.

“We talked for a long time. He’s a really nice guy, but the first thing he says is I’m parked too far from the road.”

She’s got my interest with that opener!

I pull up a lawn chair and sit next to her in the shade of her motorhome.

Gail continues her report.

“He says ‘You gotta be within thirty feet of the road’ and I tell him, ‘Oh no, that’s in a regular campground. Out here in a dispersed camping area, it’s within three hundred feet of the road. I know. I looked it up.’” Gail states the obvious — that this volunteer doesn’t know the rules, but he’s a nice guy anyway.

Besides the distance rules, the enforcement of the 14-day limit is a big issue on Gail’s mind.

Why do people hate dandelions?

Last year she stayed here all summer. No doubt she wants to do the same this year.

“He doesn’t seem to care how long you stay. He even suggested I can move over to the other side of the campground, now that the off-roaders’ ruts have dried and you can get up that road. I had to explain to him that after fourteen days you have to move to another forest. This guy doesn’t know much about the rules.”

Ken pulls up in his Class C with Scooter in the passenger seat.

They’ve been to PetCo in Flagstaff so Scooter could be vaccinated for rabies. Gail is anxious to tell Ken about the visit by the forest volunteer.

It’s fun listening to Ken and Gail discuss a hot topic like this.

Ken considers himself a realist, although some might say he’s a bald-faced pessimist working his way up to paranoid. Gail, on the other hand, is an optimist to the nth degree. With Gail, everything will turn out okay. According to Ken, “Gail lives in a fantasy world.”

Their back-and-forth conversation is like racquetball. The ball goes up, the ball comes down. The ball goes up, the ball comes down.

Gail is smiling with her news. “I don’t think they’re gonna’ hassle us here, Ken.” She relates the pleasant interchange she experienced with the National Forest volunteer.

I adore dandelions, too! I think they are exquisite, and if you’ve ever roasted the roots till they are dark brown and simmered them to make dandelion coffee, you would protect them instead of trying to get rid of them! Rich, complex, superb coffee with chocolate undertones.

My daughter told me once that she feels guilty every time she weeds her lawn now. 😀

Sue, Ken would get on my nerves, I think. But you make his pessimism sound funny!

Both Ken and Gail are good people. Plus they’re intelligent and interesting. When I characterize people, I can’t show all the sides of their personalities because I’m trying to make a story that’s enjoyable. I bet if you met Ken he wouldn’t get on your nerves at all.

Wow! You really know dandelions. My mother used to cut the greens when they first come up and cook them like spinach.

It occurs to me
that the official, honest-to-goddess
woman-bearing flower is most likely the dandelion,
one fantastic creation what got piss poor press,
and has yet to recover full flower status.

Howsomever and nonetheless,
it goes on going on (to the chagrin of many)
painting grass with sunshine,
making tea, salad, chains, wine
and carrying wishes on the wind.

What else but a woman,
(or one dumb dandelion)
could withstand chemical warfare,
decapitation, widespread denigration,
being yanked out by its roots
and other decidedly unfriendly acts-
not to mention the piss poor press-
and go right on blooming her fool head off?
–Copyright 1986 by JG Masters

Hi Sue, Do you ever think that just maybe you have too much fun ; ). BTW after you told me about your 3g connection I signed up for a Millenicom contract and they sent me their(Verizon) air card. It works wonderfully in my driveway, we’ll see about the real (dispursed) world.
Ed

I can’t wait to meet you !!!!!!!!!! I know we will run into each other if I ever get out of here and on the road. I don’t have a crew, just me and my class C motorhome and I hope to have as much fun as you have. I am a country girl and want to get back to the simple life….

Dandelions…we do our best to kill something natural that is good in salads, can be made into tea, and can be used as a coffee substitute. Then we plant grass which we water regularly so that it can grow so we can cut it down again and we can’t make a thing with it!! Yup, makes sense to me. (I worked in my yard today – ugh!)

Howdy rvsue & crew,
Did you get a crick in your neck, with all of the back and forth??? hee hee hee!! I’m with the pessimist; I don’t believe anything the guvmint sez!!! You should try and get VA medical!! Ha Ha
There ain’t no such!!!

The administrative side of the VA is as you have described it. However, I have been very pleased with the medical care that I have received from the VA. I do have a problem with wait times for some services because I’m in a low priority VA classification, so I just suck it up and pay cash to the ‘sickcare’ providers for my eyes and teeth.

The VA is much improved these days, at least where my father and uncle received services in GA. Our experience was several years ago. The wait time was very bad at that time. People sometimes waited all day and they couldn’t leave even for a short time because no one would give an estimate of how long of their wait remained.

You ain’t half bad in person either girl…you just have more time to play with the words when you’re writing. We had fun visiting with you last summer and look forward to running into you again in person some day.
Whether you’re a “Ken” or a “Gail” is really a matter of perspective. Lots of times (not always) the same things happen to both kinds of folks. It’s just that the Gails expect things to work out fine and they usually do but not always. When they don’t the Gails just let it go and move on or take the lemons and make lemonade. The Kens expect things to go wrong – and are surprised when they go right but tend to dwell on it when they don’t. Personally, I think I’m somewhere in the middle but I lean more towards Gail’s outlook than Ken’s. Stuff happens but God is still good and I prefer to focus on the good stuff.

We’re shaped by our experiences. Our tendencies, whether acquired in childhood or set in place before birth, influence how those experiences shape us. I think pessimism can be a defense mechanism that takes over after a shocking or traumatic experience. I went througha pessimistic time in my life. Everything seemed to go wrong and no matter what I did, they continued to go wrong. The optimism of other people made it even worse. At some point I “bottomed out” and my life began to turn around.

I think Ken has had real experiences where he was targeted, whereas Gail hasn’t. I wonder sometimes if the optimist is simply someone who hasn’t had the trials of the pessimist, or, like me, has had time to rise up from the ashes, so to speak.

Keep your focus on God and the good stuff, Reine! You are a positive influence. I’ll always remember the good you did for me.

I agree with you here 100% Sue…it is experience I think that either unites or divides people the most. I think it says something that Ken, Gail and you are all friendly enough to spend time with each other. It is good to exchange ideas and viewpoints. Why do we all have to think 100% alike anyway?

Thanks for the good luck. I won’t be here much longer and I think he only works on weekends.

Ken and Gail do seem to go together, at least in print. They aren’t a couple though. They both met when camped at The Slabs. Then they ran into each other again at Quartzsite. I’m becoming aware of how the seasonal movements of fulltimers cause people’s paths to cross periodically. I think Ken is leaving tomorrow and Gail is staying in this area.

I talked with Ken as I took the crew up the road on our evening walk. He got me laughing again, calling the volunteer a Junior Ranger Rat because Ken is convinced the volunteer is going to tell the Ranger what Gail told him and bring trouble our way. You can’t make this stuff up!

Loved the Ken and Gail story. What fun would it be if there weren’t both types? Hubby is the Ken and I am the Gail. (I call him Big Chief Dark Cloud in those moments. Not sure what he might call me.) Seriously, though, it’s a good balance. Glad Spikey found another place to soak his belly. Bridget is such a girly girl. Love them both. Thanks for another interesting post.

Great job of narrating the match. Serve/point/game!! All the fuss over the rules reminds me of the Y2K thing. Remember that. Boy some folks thought the world was going to be coming to an end. All the preparations. I did nothing, assumed everything would go on as usual and by golly it did!!

If I ever have a yard again, I’m going to let the dandelions go and see what happens. Would they take over everything and my lawn would be dandelion leaves and no grass? That would be great!! Who wants to mow and fill the air with the awful pollutants from those little engines which along with their snow blowing, chain sawing and leave flowing cousins are far more polluting than a car. But now I’m wondering if the leaves die and then you’d have a yard full of dirt all winter. Maybe one of your commenters who seem to know everything can answer this. I’d sure like to know.

Oh yeah, the Y2K thing. I never did anything because I procrastinated, and bingo . . .time solved that problem!

Blogging is a surprise every time I post. I put a little photo with a comment on dandelions and it generated more discussion than anything else! Way to go,, dandelions! They are so pretty around here, the bright yellow against the fresh green grass.

I hate leaf blowers. I’d much rather rake or sweep leaves.. . . or NOT! Best of all is walking on them!

Yup, you’re right. The dandelion thing really brought out the comments. BCDC (Big Chief Dark Cloud) really hates ’em. To top it off he’s a leaf blower!! He wants to keep the lawn like a park. He even mows the lawn in both directions to make a nice pattern.
This is the same guy that will leave empty candy wrappers on the kitchen counter with the waste basket 2 feet away. If I want to look at dandelions I only need to look across the street where they seem to cultivate them with great pride. (Doncha think that may upset BCDC??) He manages to keep quiet about the neighbor’s yellow crop and keeps busy digging any “volunteers” that creep into his park. I have to admit that I like our park but I understand the other side of the story as well.

Actually, we are fortunate that the Y2K thing was caught when it was…there was a huge scramble and effort costing a great deal of money and time to fix things at least among the electric companies. My engineer hubby worked at that time for a big nuclear power plant. The smaller plants (not nuclear) in our region did nothing much, but they did not have the funds to do it really…and they knew if the big plants took care of things, they too would be ok. It was kept pretty quiet on the news as to what REALLY transpired behind the scenes. The story could have ended quite differently.

To me there’s some real nice growth along them hills & roadways,, As a kid I would pick some to give to my mother, she never called them weeds,to her they were a beautiful bunch of “Road with he a” Thanks for the memory’s Sue…..

That’s a sweet memory for you to carry all your life, John. I have a similar one, only I picked wild violets for my mother. For years, when picking out a Mother’s Day card or a birthday card for her, I would choose one with violets on it. After she died and I was going through her things, I found those cards of violets.

When you jump from blog to blog, you have to remember the topic! The rolling stone is talking about Canadians, Happy Trails are working there ‘trails’ off 4 days a week and here, it’s flower power! Dandelion wine is in the lyrics of a song I once heard. Does it exist? How does it taste? Did you know that dandel’s are commonly used by young boy’s to court young girl’s.. works for me…. (I mean cost and availibility).

That video I told you about may or may not be suitable for the purpose I suggested, since it is a promo for a product. But watch it anyway! Music not bad either. I’m leaving now, ya’ll can talk! bye BR

I read your entry today to hubby who got home from work not long ago…gave him some laughs!! Thanks….tis nice to have places like this with good writing and a few laughs!! (Not laughing at anyone by the way…just the interplay of works does that). And of course, your funny little dogs seem always doing something amusing!!

Ken and Gail are serious fun entertainment! You can’t buy that kind of fun! I followed that link on dandelions offered by Harriet…. great information on that link! Sue you are the storyteller supreme! Always fun to read your blog!

Sue, In years past, generally Forest rangers were “ok” people, but most Nat. Park Svc. rangers and summer temps. thought they were God. I’ve dealt with both but not lately, and what i’ m hearing and seeing now is the “tree huggers” want everything off the public lands, so only the young physically fit can “pack in”. They are closing Forest roads and campgrounds here in Colo., some due to lack of funds others to get “mechanized” vehicles out. I see both sides of the battle and part of the problem is new bikes & ATV “tearing up” these public lands. I believe they need more enforcement of the trouble makers and open the “lands” back of to public who want to take care of it.
Just curious what your observations will bring as you move around.

I’m sensing the growing tension between different groups when it comes ot the use of our public lands. I had read about this previously. Now that I’m actually in the National Forests, this animosity (if that’s not too strong a word) is becoming real.

It reminds me of the struggle in earlier years between the cattle people and the sheep people. Both have “rights,” and both have to coexist. However, no one has the “right” to ruin the resource for everyone else.

I’ll admit i’ve been treading lightly on this subject because I don’t want to kick up a firestorm in this blog. It makes me miserable when readers get riled up and then start attacking each other and me. For this reason I haven’t made a post describing the messes I’ve seen caused by ATVs. Believe me, it’s extensive and heart-breaking. The campsite I’m in now looks pretty in a picture. However, it is circled by criss-crossing, ugly mud trails made by motorized vehicles driving around and around in one area. In the Sonoran I saw a saguaro lying on the ground. That cactus was close to 100 years old and an ATV knocked it over in a few seconds (I could see the tracks). Like you said … “troublemakers.” A few make problems for all.

Your comment is thought-provoking. I’ll report what I see in the future, although I have to handle the topic with kid gloves.

Since you are out there every day and aware, perhaps get some license numbers off the offending vehicles. We have had confrontations in Forest areas where they actually come in close to your camp spinning “donnies” and creating dust and hazards for children and small pets, and then saying they have as much right to be there as anyone else. These people are sick and are ruining it for everyone.
If they would “fine them big time” and impound their vehicles it would slow it down. That is how the illegal hunting is handled.
Our problem is we normally don’t have cell phone coverage to report this stuff until well after the fact. But if you do, you could call in a description and actions if unable to get that license number.
I have been in the mountains/forest since WWll and it is disgusting to see what is happening, so that is why I’m so adamant about this issue,
thanks for listening.

Howdy rvsue&crew,
WHY IS IT THAT I’M GETTING SEVERAL COPIES OF THE SAME COMMENTS ALL DAY LONG??
This has been going on for a week… Sometimes it’ll be the same email in a row!!! If you can do something, please, do!!!!

Good morning, Butterbean … That vehicle is okay for boondocking in the outback. I wouldn’t want to go under an overpass going 65 mph! I do like the observation deck… good for watching wildlife (and I don’t mean at another campsite!). Thanks for the interesting link.

Howdy y’all,
HERE I GO AGAIN!!! Today I was reading in the news where some citizens were having to sue the city of Brady(a small town), Texas because the city had leased some land(320 acres) next to their homes, for a ATV Park… The homes were there for years before and the city of Brady had to buy the land, zone it and then lease it for the ‘dust-buggies’ to ‘play’ on!!! SMELLS like a ‘feed-lot’ to me and ‘a city employee’ had some hand in it… No hearings DONE DEAL!!! YEAH RIGHT!!!
Honest clean-living folks ain’t got a chance these days!! THE MONEY TALKS!!

Sure it’s the administration of services; setting appointment, etc.. THEY DON’T LISTEN TO THE PATIENTS!! When you tell them you have 235 MILES TO DRIVE and don’t have the MONEY to come the day before and get a HOTEL ROOM, so you can make the appoitnment, THEY SCHEDULE YOU AN 8am appointment ANYWAY!!! When you do make an appointment the docs
are mostly from foreign countries, who barely speak English and understand it even less; EVEN SURGEONS!! If they had gone to American Medical schools, they could at least understand our
language!!! I have a ‘Doctor’ from Pakistan, who has been in the VA system for 25 years and she can barely make herself be understood!!! One from India told me to take 5 times the medicine I was supposed to!!! That would have KILLED me!!!

Oh, Butterbean,, I hate to hear that! I know exactly what you mean. This is what my father and uncle went through for years with the VA. I didn’t mention this earlier because I thought maybe the problems had been fixed and then I’d be reporting something that’s no longer true.

Here’s a little example, but it represents the attitude: You find the doctor’s office within the VA maze .. . There’s a note on the door that says, “Be back in an hour.” So you wonder … Is that an hour from 2 minutes ago or is that an hour from 58 minutes ago? You may be dying for something to eat after a four-hour drive before breakfast, but you can’t go get a bite to eat, because if the doctor comes back in 3 minutes, you lose your place. Why not write a note that says, “Be back at 9:30.” It doesn’t take a rocket scientist. Stuff like that used to drive us crazy. My uncle waited three hours with about 35 other veterans until I finally threw an insane fit that I was afraid the heart palpitations and arm pain he was having would kill him in the waiting room! Oh boy, I could go on for days . . .

Howdy rvsue&crew,
That’s it and I got lots more stories.. I really worry what the returning vets are getting for their service.. I’ve heard all of the VA horspistols & clinics are over-run and a lot are NOT taking anymore patients… That’s NOT what we were promised when we joined up to fight!! The folks
that work there seem to think we are beggars or something!!!
When are we going to get back to moving around to new places?? Where do you plan to go from here?? If you happen to see a couple in a covered wagon, pulled by a couple of mules; they are
friends of mine Mary & Chuck Reagan, from Kentucky.. They have a blog… Also, up in the Northern Rockies a beautiful pair of Belgians along with a big gray Percheron are hooked up to a blue and white RV wagon, driven by another friend, Bob Skelding, his website is WAGONTEAMSTER.COM.. He’s been on and off the road, for different reasons, for about 4 years, now… He’s now making a loop around the Rocky mountains, until June 2013!! I hope you get to meet him and his ‘crew’!!!

That’s terrible. Our vets deserve the best. Sometimes I would leave the VA medical center in tears, so upset that veterans of wars going back to WWII were being treated so poorly. I guess it goes back to not enough money. I’m sorry you have to put up with it, Butterbean.

I’ve read about the man with the draft horses. I’d love to meet him!

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Meet the canine crew!

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